Smart Enough Not To Know Enough - That's Mario Cuomo

WASHINGTON — Like a journalistic Javert, I have been tracking Gov. Mario Cuomo for months to get his position on countering the threat of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He has ducked.

Last week, a Los Angeles Times reporter showed up at a California dinner to hear the front-running non-candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination say, ''You could negotiate something that . . . leaves them a little bit on the water, leaves them a little bit of the oil, and then puts in a United Nations task force'' to monitor chemical and nuclear weapons capacity.

This time the governor returned my call, and I had the chance to put the question in the form of a sad commentary: So, Mario, you're handing out rewards for aggression.

''I'm kind of shocked at this report,'' he countered. ''I said - and this was to a private group a week ago, in a Q-and-A, nobody knows exactly what I said - that I was supportive of the president up to this point, but now we're at a different point, and it's appropriate for the president to do more to explain.

''I said Saddam Hussein was a great threat, especially in his eagerness to use chemical weapons and perhaps his capacity for nuclear weaponry.''

But did he suggest a settlement?

''They're surely talking,'' he pointed out. ''I've met (Yevgeny) Primakov (Soviet envoy in the Mideast) - he went to Baghdad to talk. Surely there are back-channel discussions going on. What deal did the Saudis get? How did Syria get its money?''

But does he favor a settlement that some of us would consider appeasement?

''It would have been presumptuous, naive and stupid of me,'' he countered in his familiar tone of exasperated expectation of being forever quoted out of context, ''to design an exact strategy.

''We have two categories to consider. One, settlement; two, war. In the category of settlement, it means that you give something to the other side. Give 'em a little oil, give 'em a little port (I did not propose that as a settlement, just the opposite), but understand - this man will not surrender. You cannot make a settlement that gives Saddam Hussein nothing; therefore, it's hard to see a settlement.

''If you presume war,'' Cuomo went on, analyzing but not proposing, ''you have to ask yourself how long the Arab leaders who are now with you will stay with you. What are you figuring on, Bill, a three-day war? You have to assume it will not be short. You cannot escape the question of a draft.

''I'm not going to raise the fairness question,'' he said, raising the fairness question, ''but I'd like to hear what the president has to say about that. I want to think that over.'' (The rich-man's-war, poor-man's-fight objection has been raised in support of a mili-tary draft ever since the Civil War.)

Why is the governor interjecting the idea of a draft?

''It seems to me if the president is thinking of going to war, he's thinking about having a draft. Maybe he has already rejected it. Could you have a war without a draft? You can't ask soldiers to fling their bodies in front of tanks and say, 'We'll take our chances on reinforcements.' What you're really saying when you consider a draft is 'We must not close our minds to loss of life.' ''

And where does this analysis lead him - to settlement or war?

''I think the president should be open to every reasonable possibility without killing people and without getting our people killed.''

To the New York governor, ''reasonable'' means an agreement that restores Kuwaiti sovereignty, ensures the oil flow, and ''something to obliterate this man's capacity to use nuclear and chemical agents against the world,'' adding ''hopefully without violence.''

But that makes him sound like a hard-liner. If you were president - ''I'd know a lot more than I know. I don't know how the sanctions are working, but I have the feeling time is not on our side. The use of a U.N. force is attractive to me.

''Look - I'm smart enough to say I don't know enough. I have a feeling about Saddam Hussein, and about war, but to get specific - I can't do that. Why don't you find some candidates for president and question them?''

If Mario Cuomo were not a candidate, he would be more outspoken about today's central issue; by raising fears of a draft, he makes the presidential decision harder now and easier to criticize later.

Ambivalence has its reasons.

If Bush removes the Saddam Hussein menace decisively, Cuomo will stay in Albany; but if a face-saving deal is arranged, Cuomo will be elected - and become the first U.S. president forced to fight a nuclear war.